At each pass, he faced incredible skepticism; a rational analysis would have predicted defeat. But he persevered. His legion of admirers — and critics — are now wishing him a full recovery now that he begins a six-month medical leave from Apple. And whatever suffering his present physical condition is causing, the mental anguish of acknowledging that he is not well enough to lead his company must be its own particular pain.

Every hero's strength is usually also a flaw. With Jobs, it is his relationship with the truth. That spirit of denial is exactly what has led him to reinvent industry after industry for the past three decades. But the truth about his own declining health — at first flatly denied, then grudgingly confirmed but downplayed, and now confirmed as grave — cannot be changed simply through the power of belief.

In 2005, two years after he was first diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, Jobs waxed philosophical about death in a commencement address he delivered at Stanford University:

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Therein lies the contradiction: In his health, Jobs does indeed have something to lose. And following his heart, which surely tells him to ignore the problem, in this matter is dangerous.

Jobs's track record, though, makes his defiance understandable. Having overcome so many other obstacles, why would he not think the aftereffects of cancer would prove trivial, too? Here's the career which helped feed Jobs's hubris:

1976 Jobs, a college dropout, founds Apple Computer with engineer Steve Wozniak. They introduce the Apple I, a personal computer for hobbyists.

1977 Apple introduces the Apple II, one of the first personal computers with a color display. Over the next 16 years, Apple sells more than 5 million units.

1984 Jobs, with a crew of self-described "pirates" pulled from other projects at Apple, introduces the Macintosh, a computer with a graphical user interface and a mouse.

1985 Apple's board fires Jobs. He founds Next Computer.

1986 Filmmaker George Lucas sells Pixar, then an animation-software startup, to Jobs.

1995 Pixar releases its first digitally animated feature film, Toy Story, and goes public; Jobs owns 80 percent, a stake worth nearly $600 million. (Pixar movies make regular appearances in Jobs's presentations for Apple, like this one in 1999.)

1996 Apple buys Next for $430 million; Jobs becomes an advisor to hapless CEO Gil Amelio.

1997 Having lost faith in Amelio, Jobs sells his entire stake in Apple. Amelio is forced out. Jobs becomes interim CEO.

1998 Jobs unveils the iMac.

2000 Jobs drops the "interim" bit and becomes Apple's CEO.

2001 A month after 9/11, to little notice, Jobs introduces the iPod.

2003 Apple launches the iTunes Music Store, with a little help from rock-star friends like Mick Jagger.

2005 The iPod Nano comes out, unveiled by Jobs as an aside at the launch of a now-forgotten iPod-phone combination.

2006 Disney buys Pixar; Jobs's stake is now worth $4.6 billion.

2007 Jobs unveils the iPhone.

2008 The MacBook Air and the iPhone 3G are announced. Observers notice Jobs's dramatic weight loss.

(Photos by AP and Getty Images)

The plans call for a master bedroom, two children's bedrooms and a living room, all connected to a two-story house on an adjoining hill, with an elevator leading up from an underground garage. County inspectors and city staff are supporting the project so far. "If the city will allow him to do it, I have every belief that he will follow through," city planner Greg Wolff told the Contra Costa Times. My advice to Docter? Don't invite the infamous tree-sitters of Berkeley over. They'd never leave.

1. Digg
2. Pixar
3. Googleplex
4. Tocquigny
5. Google Zürich
6. IAC
7. Six Apart
8. Netflix
9. Etsy
10. Gawker Media

Six Apart's offices seem pretty ordinary to me. Their meeting space is *tiny*. Googleplex's niceties are all about enticing their workers to stay at work longer — yeah, that's real HAWT!. Valleywag offices look like a dump to me.

Click on each company name for its full galleries.

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• Tech's top 10 workspaces
• Tocquigny
• Six Apart
• Pixar
• Netflix
• Googleplex
• Google Zürich
• Gawker Media
• Etsy
• Digg
• IAC

Here's what's odd: Pixar is now owned by Disney, which cleared everyone "currently associated" with the company of wrongdoing. That includes Steve Jobs, Pixar's former CEO, now a Disney board member, but leaves Mather out in the cold. So far out that Disney itself hasn't disclosed her legal jeopardy to its own shareholders — the people whose Mather's Pixar backdating most affected.

No wonder Disney wanted a sequel made, with or without Pixar. (The companies' contract gave Disney the right to do sequels.) Previously, the Pixar-produced Toy Story 2 had grossed $486 million. Though not without an infant's brush with death. In The Pixar Touch, author David Price explains that a harsh deadline imposed on the filmmakers lead to all kinds of trouble and even a near fatality:

The situation came to a head when an overstressed and overtired animator set off to work with his infant child, having agreed with his wife that he would drop the baby off at day care that morning. When he spoke with his wife later that day, she casually asked how the drop-off had gone — and he realized only then that he had, in his mental haze, completely forgotten.

The baby was still in the back seat of his car in the parking lot. Although quick action by rescue workers headed off the worst, the incident became a horrible indicator that some on the crew were working too hard.

And so he embraced the company he co-founded and so rudely kicked him out, appointed as an interim CEO just a little over a year after his return. He even agreed to take a token salary of $1 a year while he turned things around, which he has since kept — not including, of course, the lavish "executive gifts" he receives from the board, such as Gulfstream jets. Even today, Jobs holds the record for "Lowest Paid Chief Executive Officer" in the Guinness Book of World Records.

And turn things around he has — just look at the stock!

But how does Steve do it? What is the secret to his success? We here at Valleywag have the answer: it's his stool, which he allegedly requires to be "present at all worldwide company events that he attends, as well as outbound speaking engagements that are designed stool-appropriate."

Our tipster explains:

With annual Mac Nuremberg rally just around the corner I thought I'd drop a line on an interesting tid-bid I just heard about His Steveness. We all know about his size 14 feet and shifting allegiances to bottled water.......

We can now also confirm that The Dear Mac Leader has a special stool. It's three-legged, designer (natch) and is his special friend on long business trips in the company jet: he requires the stool be present at all worldwide company events that he attends as well as outbound speaking engagements that are designated "stool-appropriate". Let's hear it for the hardest working stool in Silicon Valley!

Do you know any more about this stool? Photos? Other stories? Are we just full of shit? Let's hear about it: tips@valleywag.com.

"On Wednesday, less than 24 hours after Mr Jobs and Disney's new chief executive, Bob Iger, unveiled the merger, [Pixar creative chief John] Lasseter went to Burbank with Pixar's president, Ed Catmull. He announced that Toy Story 3 would now be scrapped, without a word about the fate of the animation team."
— The Independent